An Analysis of the Holy Covenant Empire vs the InterGalactic Empire
by Bloodfox64
Summary: Warnings: Short Story; Foul Language - The question: "Who would win, the Covenant from Halo or the Empire of the Original Star Wars Trilogy?" Many have tried to answer the question, but ruin it with ignorance or fanboy tendencies. I aim to accurately and fairly answer the question here.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

A quick explanation about the title, particularly the "InterGalactic" bit:

Realistically, with the state of things in Star Wars, a small number of Systems from the Companion Dwarf Galaxies would have been a part of the Republic, making it "the InterGalactic Republic".

This fact would carry over to the Empire Era, making it "the InterGalactic Empire".

Now, with that tangent out of the way, I started this after seeing YouTube video about the Covenant (Halo) vs. the Empire (Star Wars), though I never did watch the video, because it is by a YouTuber who I can't stand because he can't get off of George Lucas' jockstrap...

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_Anyhow_, why don't you – the reader – scroll down and see my opinion on the subject and you can tell me what you think, hmm?

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Oh, P.S.: "Holy Covenant Empire" is the actual proper name of the Covenant from Halo.

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**Story Start**

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Now to start, first we have to decide when the two groups would be encountering each other, in particular, when in their world's timeline would we be referencing?

For the sake of simplicity, I will go with the height of their power. For the Covenant, it would be just before or right at the start of the devastating Human/Covenant War that lasted for basically 28-ish years. For the Empire, their height of power would be solidly during or just before the beginning of Episode IV, before anything really happened, with both the Death Star and Executor not being destroyed, along with the fact that the Rebellion hasn't quite started up in full swing yet.

Next we have to consider how this would happen, thankfully, I can use the truly impossible powers of Handwavium to just put the Covenant's territory (which is the majority of a galactic arm) into the Unknown Regions of space in the Star Wars Galaxy, particularly the "Western" edge of the Galaxy.

Thirdly, we have to consider who would be leading the two groups. For Empire, it's fairly simple: Emperor Palpatine, followed by the tied trio of: Darth Vader, Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. For the Covenant, we have the High Prophets of Regret, Mercy, and Truth as the Triumvirate that is at the top, with them bringing back (with extreme reluctance on the High Prophets parts) Imperial Admiral Xytan 'Jar Wattinree of the Sangheili.

If you're wondering why these positions are as they are, here's a quick rundown:

For the Empire, Emperor Palpatine is at the top because well... That's sorta his thing at the time.

Now for the troublesome part for the Empire: Darth Vader, Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, and Grand Admiral Thrawn being basically on equal ground.

Darth Vader is essentially the first in line to be Emperor (If Palpy dies) and is also basically the Supreme Commander of the Empire's military, along with, you know, the fact that as a Force user, he is quite the military asset himself.

Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin is an extremely high ranking member of the Empire and he has long had the ear of Emperor Palpatine, and oh, he is the Commander of the Death Star.

Grand Admiral Thrawn is unique. He is not Human, when the Empire is very anti-anything-not-Human right now because of the Emperor. But, Emperor Palpatine picked Thrawn for a reason and that reason is simple: Thrawn is one of the most skilled military commanders and strategists there is.

So, with this in mind, on the Empire's end it would be like this: Palpatine tells them what he wants, Thrawn does most of the overall commanding, with Vader assisting when needed (and handling ground command for many of the more important battles) and Tarkin waving around the big dick that is the Death Star also on Trawn's request (while also handling a lot of the background bossing around when it comes to fights that occur in Imperial territory).

Now, we gotta look at the Covenant:

As a religious Empire, the High Prophets of Regret, Mercy, and Truth work as the Holy Triumvirate that leads and with time period that we've pick to Handwave the Covenant into Star Wars, those three pricks are where they are.

Now under them is the High Council of the Covenant, but in a war situation the High Prophets can largely do what they want, unfortunately for them...

...They would normally NOT want to bring back Imperial Admiral Xytan 'Jar Wattinree from his previous assignment (Which was essentially exile).

Now, by now most of you readers have a few questions about Xytan, like "Who the fuck is this guy?", "Why would the High Prophets not want to bring him back?", "Why would they bring him back if they don't want to?", and "What do you mean by his previous assignment being essentially exile?".

Thankfully, all of these questions can be answered as a part of the same explanation:

Long story short, Xytan was a Badass of a Sangheili. So Badass that he had never been beaten or failed an assignment, meaning, essentially, he was too good. Because of this, he had such a large amount of political clout that he was being compared to the previous High Prophets in authority and they didn't like that, but they couldn't just kill him either. So, they gave him the Command over the Fleet that protected the Covenant's border, which also happened to be very far away from where Xytan could do anything with his clout.

Now, during the Human/Covenant War, he basically never popped up, no matter how bad the War got for the Covenant and in the Halo Books, he was killed by a Planet Cracking Nuke where a large number of Covenant forces had been rallying before/during the events of Halo 3.

But, why would the High Prophets of Regret, Mercy, and Truth bring him back to fight for them if they didn't for the Human/Covenant War?

Well, it's both simple and not simple. With the Human/Covenant War, the High Prophets were trying to both cover up the fact that Humans were the Reclaimers and trying to just kill the technologically inferior Humans. They didn't need Xytan around, risking their cover up being uncovered and to put it simply, while the War was hard on the Covenant's resources, the Humans weren't considered that big of an actual threat. (After all, until after the Fall of Reach, the war was an all but guaranteed win for the Covenant, but then a bunch of convoluted shit – A.K.A. Halos 1-3 – happened and things just went waaaaay downhill for the Covenant in a very short amount of time.)

The Empire on the other hand... Well, we'll get into why they would be considered a threat in my next point of discussion...

Point number 4:

What are the numbers for both sides?

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Yeaaah. Unfortunately, neither Halo or Star Wars gives us anywhere near exact numbers, but I can make decent guesstimates.

The InterGalactic Empire: they rule over millions of worlds and quadrillions of Sentient Beings (Quadrillion being a step above Trillion, or a number with fifteen zeros behind it, example one quadrillion is 1,000,000,000,000,000). To go with this, they would likely have a truly massive military, made of hundreds of millions of soldiers, millions of Storm Troopers, millions of starships (10s of thousands being standard Star Destroyers), several Star Dreadnoughts, and, of course, the Death Star. So, let's go with this:

– Approximately 5,000,000 planets

– Approximately 5,000,000,000,000,000 citizens

– Approximately 900,000,000 military personnel (of all branches)

– Approximately 5,000,000 Storm Troopers (counted sperate from the rest of the military)

– Approximately 8,000,000 military starships capable of Hyperspace (from cargo vessels to support combat ships)

– Approximately 50,000 Star Destroyers

– Approximately 12 Executor-class Star Dreadnoughts

– Approximately 1 Eclipse-class Star Dreadnought

– Approximately 1 Death Star

On the other hand, the Covenant is a bit trickier to figure out. We have a vague idea of how big their territory is, but not much else. So, let's pull some very rough numbers out of my ass:

– Approximately 1 half of a Galactic arm of territory

– Approximately 500,000 worlds

– Approximately 15,000,000,000,000 citizens

– Approximately 100,000,000,000 Grunt Cannon fodder

– Approximately 10,000,000,000 in other troops (Jackals, Brutes, Drones, Hunters)

– Approximately 1,000,000,000 in Sangheili Soldiers

– Approximately 500,000 small vessels (Frigates, Corvettes, and small FTL transports)

– Approximately 100,000 medium to large warships (Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships)

– Approximately 7,500 Carriers

– Approximately 1,000 Assault Carriers

– Approximately 200 Super Carriers (Massive versions of Assault Carriers that are just short of 30Km long)

– Approximately 1 Mobile Moon City (The Holy City of High Charity)

Now, this might seem heavily lopsided, but the devil is in the details...

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You might be wondering, how is this even a fair fight? The Empire out numbers the Covenant drastically!

Well, there are a few factors:

1) They use drastically different methods of Faster Than Light Travel. "How different?" You ask. Well, firstly, the Slip-Space Drives of Halo can go from point A to point B – no driving around gravity wells required, as it is for Star Wars Hyperdrives. Next, and yes this is quite a dick-ish thing to do, but there is a Hyperspace Boundary that prevents basically all Hyperspace travel to the Unknown Regions, which is where the Covenant is. Now, I could remove it for the sake of the scenario, but let's just make some very large holes and be done with it.

I guesstimate that the FTL speeds for both sides are comparable and roughly equal for the military ships, so they are on almost even footing on speed. (i.e., if you put a cruiser from both sides next to each other out in the void between galaxies and had them do a 1 Light Year race, they would finish at essentially the same time, with a difference of – at most – a few seconds… And I'm not saying which would be ever-so-slightly faster, it doesn't really matter.)

2) Weapons, shielding, and armor. This is the part that I know almost every person I've seen who's done a Halo vs. Star Wars forgets. Why is this important? Simple, the shields used on the ships in Star Wars aren't geared towards dealing with the kind of Weapons used in Halo, by either the UNSC or the Covenant.

The big issue is that the Covenant uses high grade Plasma weapons for their main weapons on basically every kind of ship they have. Now, for those who don't know, Plasma is a state of matter, much like Solid, Liquid, and Gas. The Covenant uses super-heated Plasma weapons.

The issue? Star Wars shields are split between 2 types, shields that block solid matter (mostly for asteroids and other space trash, even on military starships) and shields that block pure energy weapons (which is what is primarily used in Star Wars).

So, let's do the math:

Weapons that are super-heated matter + Shields that mostly block pure energy = Oh, shit! We've been hit!

Next part of why the weapons matter: in Halo, both the Covenant and the UNSC fought in distances that where measured in thousands of kilometers, if not tens of thousands of kilometers. Now, I hadn't really ever seen them put numbers on the distances involved with the Star Wars space battles, but I think line of sight is a lot shorter distance than what the Covenant operates at. The only thing for Star Wars that goes beyond line of sight, is the super weapons (Death Star, Super Lasers, etc.).

Now, we can get to the armor and more about the shielding. The armor is another thing that is very hard to judge, but I'd say that it leans slightly to the Covenant, because they use the same material for all of their ships, while only a handful of the Imperial ships have the uber high end armor materials.

With the energy shielding, the Covenant takes the Cake as well, during the Human/Covenant War, the Covenant ships that had energy shields were notoriously hard to take down, though only ships larger than a Frigate actually have energy shields... In addition, basically any Covenant ship can have high grade stealth Cloaking, which can hide from very good sensors.

3) Combat Doctrine. This is another one of those points that most Versus Matches just seems to ignore, mentality of the those in the fight.

Generally speaking, with how both sides would fight, it leans to the Covenant. This is because while the Sangheili prefer Honorable Combat, they still fight smart with actual tactics and strategy. On the other hand, while certain parts of the Imperial Military are very well trained and know what they are doing, most of the Empire follows the Tarkin Doctrine.

The Tarkin Doctrine, while primarily a political document, it also laid out the military's primary tactics and overall strategy: intimidation over skill. Basically "look scary and have big guns".

Unfortunately for Wilhuff, his Doctrine is the main source of blame (from reasonable people) for most of the faults of the Imperial Military, their vehicles, starships, and training.

Yes, both Vader and Thrawn are skilled leaders who don't have their heads up their ass, but that doesn't do anything about the fact that not only is every ship, vehicle, and piece of gear made in line with the Tarkin Doctrine, but every member of the Imperial Military is trained with it in mind as well.

On the other hand, the Sangheili (Who are the military leaders of the Covenant) – while occasionally too nice to their opponents by giving them a chance to fight – actually have spent the past 1,000-ish years refining their tactics and are being led by someone who has NEVER failed. Not a single time in his entire life, because he is. Just. That. Good.

This isn't me being a biased fan boy, it is LITERALLY a part of Xytan's background and character that he is like that, that as a soldier and commander, he never failed. In fact, his only flaw is the fact that he never failed. Yes, this is a fair bit Mary Sue-ish, but I'd say the guy is upwards of 90 years old, so... Yeah? Experienced Badass.

4) Technology. Now here's a bit that also doesn't get much attention, how the two groups compare technologically.

Overall, I'd say they are at similar levels of tech, they just have (vastly) different focuses. But the biggest question is this, "How would they effect each other with their technology?"

Well, with big fights, there is going to be a lot of scrap, from both sides. Here's a list of things that either side has that the other doesn't:

Star Wars:

– Super advanced robotics

– Local high grade materials

– Medicine

– Local knowledge (Star charts, languages, etc.)

– Some relatively small scale energy shields

Halo:

– High grade energy shields

– Cloaking

– Plasma tech

– Teleportation (Yes, the Covenant has this, they use it for getting around big ships and getting from a ship in orbit to a base on the ground.)

The big problem in the end though is that the Covenant has a better capability to take apart Star Wars tech and use it for themselves than the other way around. This is mostly because the Covenant has Huragoks. They are hyper intelligent synthetic Beings that act as super computers and can literally take something apart in seconds and soon after that, understand what the item is and find ways to improve it. This means the tech advantage – if there is one to start with – that the Empire would have would quickly be eliminated by the Covenant.

I think that is it for considerations. So, next we have...

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The talk of how the conflict itself would go.

Firstly, the readers must keep in mind that I, the writer, do not intend to write a prolonged story about how the conflict would go. Instead, what I am writing is a summary of how I think it would go and why. With this in mind...

Now, the first thing we have to take into consideration is how conflict would even start between the two factions.

To simplify things, let's say that when the Covenant is plopped into the Star Wars Galaxy, both sides are essentially informed about the other, something along the lines of this:

Emperor Palpatine would be told: "A collective of Sentient species that is hostile to Humans is about to go to war with your Empire, good luck. You can find them at the following co-ordinance, -insert numbers-." This would set Palpy off because her is highly specist (Note #1) and all but has Imperial policy enforce a "Human First" policy.

While the High Prophets would be told: "Human heretics are a large part of and lead the greater Galactic community. They are many, but are weak. You can start here -insert numbers- to start your Holy Crusade." Well, this is the High Prophets right as the Human/Covenant War started, so they would get a real hard on for killing off the Human, mostly because they need to have Humans killed of to cover up shit the High Prophets don't want known.

Realistically, the messages would be bigger, more complicated, and have more information, but you get the idea.

Next, the first move. I believe that the Covenant is more capable in gathering forces for a Fist Strike and with their advantage in FTL... *Shrugs* First Blood would likely go to the Covenant.

From here, it gets muddy and would require a full on story, so I will talk about some highlights and the likely outcome.

Within three or so weeks, the Covenant would take several worlds, raid whatever tech and info they could get, and raze said worlds. This would happen over, oh, a few days? Because Xytan would hit the first world and once they get some star charts – which are fucking everywhere in Star Wars – Xytan would send out a group of fleets to raze the next closest star systems and do some scouting. These systems and worlds would provide very little resistance, because they it would be unlikely that they would have much more than a token defense force.

Now, at the same time, Thrawn would be assembling several large fleets, but because of the size of the Empire (amongst a slew of other small factors), this would take a lot longer than it would for the Covenant. By the time Empire got news of the first attacks, chances are the Covenant would be long gone, leaving behind death and glass.

From here, it would be a series of attacks and counter attacks that wouldn't go well for the Empire, even if Thrawn was leading against a Covenant Fleetmaster who wasn't Xytan (which there would be many), but this goes back to the disparity between the two Empires.

Over the first few months, the Covenant would have fully taken apart and integrated whatever useful tech they have found so far that would be useful to them, which isn't too much.

Over time and a lot of back and forth, things would still stay in the Covenant's favor, but Thrawn would quickly learn to set up the battle field if he wants any hope of winning, this would mostly involve setting up ambushes and hyperspace micro-jumps, along with ruthlessly using the Death Star and the Eclipse for their long range and high damage capability.

Even still, for the first year or so, the Covenant would basically be steam rolling the Empire, with the only thing holding them back from glassing more worlds being resources and the only thing keeping them from key worlds like Coruscant, Corellia, etc. would be their planetary shields, which would be some of the few shields that the Empire has that would defend against energy and kinetic attacks equally.

But after that year, the Empire would start shipping out turbolasers with more range and power, along with better energy shielding against physical stuff. How effective this would be is debatable, but I'd say that it would be stupidville expensive, mostly due to supply issues rather than production issues.

With this in mind, lets theorize an end result:

With the Covenant slowly creeping into Imperial space and the rebellion gaining momentum with every day, the Empire eventually breaks under the stress. Emperor Palpatine would be unable to put down large scale rebellions because most of the fleets would be off fighting the Covenant, dealing with pirates, or doing the bare minimum of patrolling of Imperial space, meanwhile, the rebellion gains momentum because of how many worlds are falling, the now blatant slaving operations that Palatine is employing to fuel the defense of the Empire, and stuff like the Death Star being very publicly used to fight of the Covenant.

In the end, the Empire would fall apart while the Covenant continues to burn world after world, but now they would just be attacking ones with any Humans on them, leading to an ironic anti-Human sentiment across the galaxy.

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Well, I was going to leave it at the above, but then I remembered that there needs to be more explanation as to why. So, here are the eight main reasons why the Empire would break under the stress of going to war with the Covenant:

1) The mining stupidity of Star Wars. Now I figure that most of you don't even know there was an issue like this in Star Wars, but there is. The main issue: from what I have observed in many parts of Star Wars media, they rarely mine materials from uninhabitable places. Yes, they do gather some resources from places that are uninhabitable, but those are few and far between. Overall, I'd say that for every example of mining or similar on an asteroid or uninhabitable location, there are 20 to 30 examples of them mining on habitable worlds (And I do count places like Mustafar as habitable, because it does have an atmosphere… Somehow.)

Anyhow, in the end, this means that in Star Wars, they are severely limiting their supply of rare materials and that makes things far more expensive and generally more difficult than they have to be. This problem will add to several of the other reasons below.

2) Pirates. With the war heavily distracting the Imperial Navy, pirate operations will pop up all over the place, along with all sorts of other criminal operations that would swell up in response to the war. In addition, the increase in criminal, and in particular pirate activity, the Empire would be forced to divert resources, which would stress the Imperial Military even more and unfortunately for the Empire, this would just weaken the war effort with anti-pirate activities that would be unable to fully quell the criminal activity. Again, this will just add to the stuff below.

3) The blatant slaving operations that Palpatine would have going. Now, this is something that wouldn't pop up at first, at least, it would be blatant later. But, because of how many warships that would have to be made and upgraded, a lot more of materials will be needed, which means physical labor to dig the stuff up, because ironically, Star Wars – a setting known for its advanced robots – does NOT use droids for mining.

*Shrugs*

Writers, they can miss soooo much at times…

Anyhow, the slave labor would sharply increase a month or two after the war starts – with it being noted that Palpatine doesn't use Human slave labor. The sizes of the operations would just keep getting bigger. And bigger. And bigger. And bigger, until the slave operations would be impossible to keep quiet and/or cover up, because the constant need for more materials for the war effort. Again, this will just add more to the reasons below.

4) The expenses of war. Yeah, war is costly and this war would be especially costly for the Empire, the need for more resources, running the slaving operations, controlling the slave labor, anti-pirate operations, dealing with rising rebellions, refugee relocation operations, and completely losing entire worlds. All of these things would have their own individual costs, but together, the costs would skyrocket and add to the stress of the situation.

5) Outrage over the Death Star. Now, while Emperor Palpatine would love to use the Death Star to threaten worlds that are rebelling, he would need to have it constantly covering Thrawn's counter offensive against the Covenant. The thing is though, is that the general population would not like the idea of the Emperor making a space station that can kill planets… Basically, the outrage that likely occurred in Canon, but without having the threat of getting your planet destroyed. Yeah, it would not help Palpy at all…

6) Now we get to one of the biggest problems: Rebellion. Canonically, the Rebellion had been gearing up since the Empire was established and well, Rogue One showed that it would take very little to set it off. So, you take that situation and add the 5 reasons above. The Rebellion would have a lot of legitimacy because of all of that shit being added to the stuff that the Empire was already doing.

7) Why the Empire would struggle to fight a war against the Covenant. Unfortunately, Canon works against the Empire, because while the Empire did bring order and a noticeable decrease to crime, it struggled to keep things that way. In the time between Episode 3 and Episode 4, the Empire engaged in dozens of conflicts to do everything from put down local rebellions, gather slaves, get resources, or eliminate CIS remnants and – as shown in the Solo movie – the Empire was hurting so much for soldiers that they would take basically anyone.

While public opinion for recruitment would drastically improve at first, because you know, an actual war that involves a genocidal enemy would have a much better look than putting down rebellions, once it is found out that the Covenant is basically only attacking to kill of Humans… Boy, it would be bad for the Empire, considering their distinct Human First agenda, which is even more stuff that the Empire couldn't handle properly.

8) Now on the flip side: why the Covenant would be able to kick the Empire's ass, when they had trouble with UNSC in Canon. Well, while the Covenant could stomp the UNSC in space, they did have trouble on the ground, but when you consider the Empire's crippling weakness that is the Tarkin Doctrine and their overall lack of ground based strategy (Commanders typically opted to just throw troops as the enemy, rather than using any form of real tactics or strategy)…

On the ground, the Empire and Covenant would be roughly equal, but in space… That is another matter. Why? Because while the Human-Covenant War took the better part of 27 years, it only took so long because the Covenant had to literally stumble across Human worlds, they had no maps and no real idea of where the next Human world would be, other than a vague idea of where Human territory was and if it weren't for the events of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, the Human-Covenant War likely would've taken a good decade to have finished, in the Covenant's favor.

But in this scenario, the Covenant doesn't have that limitation, in fact, with the first few Imperial worlds that Covenant attack, they would likely be able to gather anywhere from a dozen to a few hundred sets of star charts and maps of Imperial space. While most likely wouldn't be complete, not by a long shot, basically every world in the galaxy would have some set of star charts, which would allow the Covenant to easily burn their way through Imperial space. In addition, by the time it would enter the minds of the Empire to restrict star charts, it would waaay too late.

Add this to the fact that because of where the Covenant is placed, the Imperial Core Worlds are much closer to the Covenant than most of the rest of the InterGalactic Empire…

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Overall, the Empire wouldn't be able to handle the stress, while the problems that the Covenant had with the UNSC would be non-existent.

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Story End

Word Count (From Story Start to Story End): 4,530 words

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End Notes:

Note #1: Specist. Yes, this is a word, it is basically racist, but between species rather than sub-groups of a species.

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Author's Note:

One thing that I want to make clear, is that I am a huge fan of Star Wars and while I think some things can be on the stupid side, I enjoy the Universe that has been created… The issue is that while I enjoy the Universe, it has some major flaws, most of them are prominent in this analysis.

The fact that I love both Halo and Star Wars is actually part of why I think I'm being fair here… But I expect that I will be getting lot of flaming reviews, which I'll just be ignoring.

So, I hope those few of you that have read this, have enjoyed it.

Now that you've gotten through that, I know many of you will be voicing your thoughts and opinions in the comments. Depending on how the… _Discussions_ go, I may write additional chapters that address the various arguments and things that are brought up. And depending on how quickly things progress, I may write something up anywhere from weekly to monthly… *Shrugs* It'll just depends.


	2. Chapter 2

Author Note:

Firstly, I would like to thank the seven of you that reviewed, because, even though I have had my other story (Chaos Abound) on here for (embarrassingly) 5 years, I haven't gotten even a troll posting a review for it and it is nice to have people express their feedback, even those of you who didn't agree with what I wrote.

…

Next, why this took waaay too long for me to post. Mostly, more moving shenanigans, in the form of helping my parents with emptying their apartment in the Chicago area of Illinois down to Phoenix-ish Arizona, while having to pass through Central Texas because money issues… Suffice to say, I hate stairs and people who make multi-floor apartment buildings that don't have any elevators… And that it isn't fun to travel several thousand miles in a loaded up vehicle that can't go over 60 miles per hour most of the time.

With that out of the way, let's get to the meat of why we are here: the continued debate of who would win in this scenario, and in this chapter I will be addressing the reviews and I will be adding a bit more info that I forgot to add in the first chapter.

**WARNING:**

**!SPOILERS!** for **Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker** near the end! You have been warned!

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Chapter Start

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Now the first review, the difference between Halo and Star Wars sensors.

I honestly don't know the exact details of either, but with what is demonstrated in the Star Wars films (all 3 trilogies) and the Halo games, both groups have FTL Sensors, so neither would have an advantage over the other when it comes to that, but as per what was addressed in the first chapter, that wouldn't level the playing field very much and in the end, it doesn't matter. That's it.

Next, we have the ranges of Covenant weapons and the idea that they have a theoretical unlimited range. Now, overall, Covenant weapons do have a limited range, but that is mostly due to the range in which the Covenant can actively guide/contain the plasma. Once the plasma leaves that range, it would disperse and rapidly lose their capability to inflict damage. They have a maximum of 100,000 kilometers for the Energy Projectors, which was partly addressed in the combat capabilities of the Covenant and in the end, doesn't matter in this scenario.

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Now we get to the next review and what is brought up there, starting with the number of world that the Covenant controls.

This is one of the many subjects that are just not addressed in the Halo games, books, or comics – so the figures given in this are mostly just supposition. But given what we know of the Covenant, they would have to be absolutely massive in territory size for them to have actual issues with rebellion and other such problematic issues, because of just how fast their Slip-Space Drives are (i.e. they can respond to issues within hours if their territory is tiny, thus making it that even if these things would crop up, they would be able to deal with the issues so fast they don't matter). Add that to stuff like the fact that they have a huge collection of numerous Species that aren't full Members of the Covenant, but are ruled by them (this is the Covenant Fringe Species, as far as I am aware, there is basically nothing on them or their numbers) and then this:

In Halo, all of the Covenant and Human territory is in the Orion-Cygnus Minor Galactic Spiral Arm (not counting stuff like outposts on Halos or similar things). This chunk of space is approximately 3,500 light years wide and 10,000 light years wide, with the thickness of the Milky Way being (on average) 1,000 light years thick, that equals roughly 35 billion (35,000,000,000) cubic lightyears of space and a bit over 1 billion ([extremely] roughly 1,059,1000,000) stars in that area. Given those numbers, that equals out to roughly the Covenant having inhabited 1 star system out of every 2,000 (this is with not one of the systems having multiple planets being used).

Counting the various factors: 1) the already habitable worlds, 2) near habitable and can be terraformed, 3) those worlds habitable to more exotic members of the Covenant (Unggoy/Grunts and Lekgolo/Hunters), 4) and the multitude of worlds that are uninhabitable but have important/usable resources that would necessitate a sizable mining operation… All of this equals to that the Covenant could easily have 500,000 worlds in a sector of space that has over 1 billion stars (Note #1)

The rest of the review is basically a bunch of related subjects, so things will kinda flow (somewhat incoherently) together here.

Now, during the Human-Covenant War, the UNSC was finding and researching Forerunner technology, but they made extremely little progress during the War and it wasn't until the SNAFU with the Forerunner Dyson Sphere/Shield World Onyx/Trevelyan that they started to make explosive progress…

…Which is only because they found a bunch of Huragok that knew Forerunner tech already, in the Shield World.

I mean, sure, Dr. Halsey and various other scientists were diving straight into the stuff from the moment it was first discovered, but they hadn't started to have even a basic grasp of what the tech actually did by Halo 5. And with that stuff, Forerunner technology. Is. Just. That. Good. Yes, Covenant tech is derived from Forerunner tech, but it is so watered down that it is basically its own thing and is better described as having been inspired by Forerunner tech.

This difference is actually somewhat shown with the UNSC Infinity, the little Forerunner tech that the UNSC was able to shove into it made it better than basically any Covenant vessel… But that said, I doubt that the Infinity would be able to take on a full on Covenant Fleet by itself.

In the post-War period that the Infinity was active, it was never deployed against anything that comes close to a full Covenant Fleet – this is ironic in how it is true in both ways it could be interpreted, first in that there was never a gathering of Covenant vessels that came close to a full Covenant Fleet that the Infinity fought and in how the difference between the Didact's ship and a Covenant Fleet is so vast that the Covenant Fleet doesn't even come close. Now, the Infinity may have been able to pierce the {Insert Name}'s outer plating, but that was only after the Master Chief disable all of the defenses near that area, indicating that the Infinity was vastly outclassed.

But anyhow, back to the SNAFU with Onyx/Trevelyan. This has to do with the last bit: if the Human-Covenant War continued for another 30 years, the Covenant would be screwed…

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_*Hysterical laughter at this ridiculous idea*_

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Woo… Anyhow, I don't mean to insult the person who made that comment, but it is a totally ridiculous idea, because you have to take into account how the Human-Covenant War ended, which is a truly spectacularly and stupidly unlikely series of events.

Events otherwise known as Halo: (The Fall of) Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved/The Flood, Halo: First Strike, Halo 2, Halo: The Ghosts of Onyx, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo 3. Those are the games and books that cover the monumental changes and chaos that occurred in a period of less than six month… I mean, so much happened that it took five games and four books to cover it all – hell, I bet I have missed a few things and there is even more to add to the cluster fuck.

I could go on about this for a long time, so, to sum it up: there is no way in hell – by all that is holy, unholy, and mundane – that the UNSC/UEG (Humanity) could have survived ten more years at war with the Covenant, let alone win the war or drag things out for thirty more years.

What does this have to do with the Covenant vs. the Empire? Well, I don't really know, but it does kinda help illustrate just how big of a gap there was between the UNSC and the Covenant, as well as the gap between the Covenant and the Forerunners.

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With this next review, the first part was addressed above, so that leaves the UNSC having obsolete tech, Star Wars weapons, and the Rebellion.

Firstly, the UNSC doesn't have obsolete technology, in fact when the Human/Covenant War kicked off, the UNSC was experiencing a period of technological growth because of the Human Insurrection, which forced the UNSC to adapt and improve their tech. It is also addressed In-Universe that Humanity would have been steam-rolled if the Insurrection hadn't happened.

Secondly, Star Wars Blasters, and Turbolasers being particle weapons… *Sigh* _Technically speaking_, info books and the like for Star Wars do say that those weapons operate like particle weapons, but with all of the contradicting depictions from the books, movies, shows, games, and the info books, you can't rely on what they tell you. Overall, the movies are thee Highest Canon, and what the movies show is that there are different kinds of shield and how Blasters/Turbolasers interact with those various kinds of shield, you cannot define Blasters/Turbolasers as we are told they are.

What I can observe about Blasters/Turbolasers, they seem to operate on _**similar**_ principles (but not the same) as actual, real world lasers do. Now, the biggest difference is that Blasters/Turbolasers don't travel anywhere near the speed of light. Other than that… *Shrugs* I know that act as if they are purely energy projectiles, no matter what info books and such say about it. I can't really add much more to this, sorry if you want a detailed breakdown, but I work with what I am given.

Anyhow, this bit about Blasters/Turbolasers matters because it loops back to Star Wars energy shields, so go back to chapter one and go over that again.

Thirdly, the Rebellion… Well, that is most of the next review, so moving on…

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First, Cherenkov Radiation. Frankly this isn't something that wouldn't matter.

For those who don't know, Cherenkov Radiation is a type of radiation that occurs when nukes come out of Slip-Space in Halo and it basically means that a ship that has nukes on it couldn't stay hidden when it comes out of Slip-Space, which caused the UNSC a lot of problems when fighting the Covenant.

The main reason that it doesn't matter for this scenario, is because the Covenant doesn't use nukes and the Empire, well, they also don't use nukes, but it is very likely that even if they did, that Star Wars Hyperspace doesn't cause nukes to make Cherenkov Radiation when dropping out of Hyperspace.

Next, how well the Empire would be able to handle things.

The first thing I gotta address is the fact that I am primarily using Disney Canon rather than Legends or Expanded Universe, even though I have the Eclipse-class Star Dreadnought (which is mostly throwing the Empire a bone and a boost in resources). So, how the war went after Palpatine's death in Legends doesn't matter for this scenario. And yes, the Empire would be able to do a Fortress World type defense for important worlds – because most of them already have Planetary Shielding, but those kinds of Shield Generators are obscenely expensive and not many additional worlds would be able to have them after a war with the Covenant started up.

Finally, I know jack-shit about stuff like the Dark Troopers Project or a lot of other stuff that is introduced in the Star Wars comics or books. This is because I (The Writer) am poor and I can't afford to buy them… And frankly, I seriously doubt that stuff like the Dark Troopers Project, or any Projects that would be cooking around that time, would be able to make a big enough of a difference to change the outcome of the scenario.

Now, the Rebellion.

Now there are two major review points of this: Who would join the Rebellion when there are a bunch of religious fanatics trying to kill them? And the Covenant trying to cleanse the Rebellion leading to a truce between the Empire and the Rebellion.

The biggest thing that is forgotten about the Rebellion, is that anywhere between 50 to 75 percent of Rebellion personnel are not Human, and this is because most of the people negatively affected by the Empire were not Human. Yes, Humans are thee most common species in the Star Wars Galaxy, but a lot of non-Humans were totally screwed by the Empire.

And yes, most of the leaders of the Rebellion were Human and a large number of worlds that were mostly Human in population that were negatively affected, but when it comes to what we see of the Rebellion and what species are in it, that mostly comes down to the fact that during the Production of the Original Star Wars Trilogy, it was likely far easier to just have some normal people in normal costumes rather than having to cough up the money to get people kitted out as aliens. I know this isn't something that some of you guys will appreciate, but you gotta look at the reality of the situation.

Anyhow, let get back on topic, who would join the Rebellion when there is a war with the Covenant going on… Well, lots of people. Sure, the number of Humans that join up would drop drastically after it's found out that the Covenant is specifically after Humans, but there would still be people who have been wronged by the Empire enough to have them say, "fuck it" and simply not care. And yes, there would be a lot of other species that wouldn't want to join the Rebellion because of the Covenant hunting down Humans, but in a galaxy that has anywhere from hundreds of Quadrillions (15 zeros) to several Quintillions (18 zeros) in population, there are going to be enough people around for the Rebellion to be fine and grow.

As for the Rebellion and the Empire joining forces?

…I don't know about that. I think that Palpatine is far too controlling and hateful to be willing to work with people that have defied him in such a manner. I mean, yes, there is a very, _**VERY**_ small chance of them teaming up, but even that wouldn't last very long and a war with the Covenant would then likely take decades, decades I think would cause the Rebellion to just start up again and leading to the same end result: the Empire breaking under the stress of everything. I would add more here, but that is mostly about the Empire itself and this bit is about the Rebellion.

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Reviews 5 and 6 don't really have anything I have to address, while Review 7 and their point about the oddity of needing the same number of MAC rounds and plasma torpedoes to take down Covenant shields despite Covenant shield being more resistant to kinetic energy… IDK and it doesn't matter too much for this.

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Here is an interesting bit that I forgot to talk about in the first chapter: Turbolasers being able to be used to Zero Base Delta a world, when they have crap range. (Quick note for those who don't know what Zero Base Delta is: essentially, it is a weapons bombardment from orbit to make a world uninhabitable.)

Honestly, I don't know why Turbolasers are able to be used for that, but I do have a couple of ideas.

1) Basically, when a Turbolaser fires down at a planet, the gravity of the planet drags the Turbolaser shot down, thus getting around the limited range of Turbolasers.

2) That when a Turbolaser bolt is shot down, it does start to disperse (i.e. the shot stops staying together and starts to scatter), but the energy of the shot is still introduced to the atmosphere of the planet and does some damage, and since Zero Base Deltas tend to have a large number of ships firing down dozens of shots, well, that damage adds up.

This doesn't really change much, but it was something that came to mind and after thinking about it for a bit, I decided to add it.

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Okay, even though I had actually covered it a lot in the first chapter, I think I need to go over why the Empire would lose to Covenant, despite the Empire having lasted for so long after Palpatine's death and the Covenant having had so much trouble with the UNSC.

Firstly, since I have to get it out of the way, what was revealed in Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

It doesn't matter. Not for this scenario, that is.

"Why?!" you ask.

Simple: the movie takes place over 35 years after the point this scenario takes place and if Palpatine had a giant ass fleet of ships that each have a super laser capable of destroying a planet, he would've used it back then, not nearly 40 years in the future after dying.

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Anyhow, getting away from that average (at best) movie…

Basically, when it comes down to it, the Empire isn't equipped to handle such a drastic change in situation, like what would occur if they fought a war again the Covenant. And something that has to be noted, I didn't say that the Empire would break under the stress in six months or some shit like that, I just said that the Empire would eventually break under the stress, likely 5 to 10 years after the war started. It would be a slow process as problem after problem built up until the Empire is unable to keep Worlds, Solar Systems, and entire Sectors from Rebelling or breaking away. There would just be too much for them to handle and keep things together.

As for the Covenant… I have also covered this, but Halo Wars 2 reminded me that there was other stuff to talk about and to cover again.

First, Atriox. Honestly, Atriox and the Banished were nowhere near as big of an issue as the game makes it out to be. I mean, if they THAT big of an issue, then the crew of the _Spirit of Fire_ (at half strength) wouldn't have been able to do anything to stop Atriox, because the Banished would have been able to just bury them under numbers. But no, not only were the crew of the _Spirit of Fire _able to cause problems, they were able to stop Atriox and basically win the mini-war.

Yes, there were other factors, but realistically, with what is shown in Halo Wars 2, Atriox and the Banished were nothing more than an irritating thorn in the Covenant's side that the High Prophets had Imperial Admiral Xytan fight with half the resources he would have needed to deal with Atriox permanently, mostly to keep Xytan distracted.

And finally, to reiterate, why the Covenant would not experience the same issues fighting the Empire that they had while fighting the UNSC. It mostly comes down to the Cole Protocol, which was a set of laws that the UNSC had that required that any Human ships or data archives that had star charts to destroy said data if they came under risk of being captured by the Covenant and that when Human vessels were running away from the Covenant, they had to make a random Slip-Space jump that also didn't go near any Human worlds. This Protocol slowed down the Covenant invasion of Human space substantially, and was half the reason why the war was dragged out for nearly 28 years.

On the other hand, the Covenant will not experience any sort of similar issues while invading Imperial space, because star charts are absolutely everywhere in Star Wars. Now, most of the data sets the Covenant would get ahold of early on would be only of smaller sections of space or of certain space lanes, but with the sheer amount of data the Covenant would be able to get ahold of, they would eventually get more complete data and/or just piece enough together before the Empire would think of restricting star charts.

…So, full steam ahead for the Covenant Invasion.

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Well, that's it.

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Story End

Word Count (From Story Start to Story End): 3,184 words

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End Notes:

Note #1: Covenant Territory Calculation Numbers

78,500,000,000 is 1% of 7,850,000,000,000 Milky Way volume

35,000,000,000 is 0.445,859,872,611,465% of 7,850,000,000,000 Milky Way volume

Going with that the Milky Way has in the neighborhood of 238,000,000,000 stars (it is estimated that the Milky Way has between 100 billion and 400 billion stars)… divide by 1,000 = 238,000,000 x 4.45 = 1,059,100,000

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Author Note

Well, another chapter done and, unfortunately, not much really added, just some more padding.

I hope that you guys have enjoyed it and that you have a good new year.


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